Authors: Gabrielle Lord
January (19 page)
I got there before Boges and went to the top level to keep a lookout for him.
It didn’t take me long to spot him jogging along, and I was about to go down and meet him when I noticed a man following him. When Boges crossed the road, so did the man.
That’s when I realised Boges was right. He
was
being followed and he was leading his pursuer straight to me!
I called him urgently. I watched as he pulled out his phone.
‘Don’t turn around! You’re still being followed!’ I told him. ‘Shake him off!’
Boges paused while he took the call, and so did the guy behind him. I could see him
pretending
to look at something on the ground. Then
Boges suddenly doubled back the way he’d come, almost colliding with the man as he straightened up. I ducked back from my lookout position.
I heard something—it was Boges, huffing and puffing. ‘I took him on a wild goose chase,’ said Boges with a smile. ‘If you think I’m puffed, you should see him! We’ve been up and down and round and round! I sent him up and down in the lift!’ He plopped himself down on the ground, wiping his face. ‘Man, I’m glad that’s over.’
‘Who do you think he was?’ I asked.
‘I reckon he was a cop. Out of condition. Too slow and heavy. I’m going to have to be very careful whenever we meet. This isn’t the first time I’ve been followed.’
‘You’re right. Boges, how’s Mum?’
‘So-so. Your uncle’s out of hospital.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘He scared the hell out of me last night. He was sleeping on the couch while I was breaking in.’
‘So you know about the plan to lease the house?’
I nodded.
‘And Gabbi? How’s she?’
‘No change. She’s still in the coma.’
‘But it’s been nearly a month!’ I said. ‘She’s got to come around soon.’
Boges looked away a moment and when he turned in my direction again, his face was very serious. ‘Cal, you should know that the doctors are saying she might never wake up.’
‘What?’ I didn’t want to hear what Boges was saying.
‘With the sort of injuries she had,’ Boges continued, ‘and the fact that she was without oxygen for so long …’
I thought of my desperate attempts at CPR.
‘She might have to be on life support for the rest of her life,’ said Boges.
I couldn’t believe it. My heart flipped. I felt so helpless. I had to change the subject. ‘I’m heading off for the country,’ I said. ‘What did you want to tell me?’
‘I’ve had an idea. About the drawings—the things that can be worn. That angel is wearing a lot of equipment. And some sort of medal.’
I pulled out the drawing of the angel and we both looked at the medal just to the side of the gas mask.
‘And you told me something was stolen from your mum—some piece of jewellery? Again,
something
you
wear
…’ he continued.
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘it was probably a gift for Mum—I’m just guessing it was jewellery. Mum said she’d never seen that box in her life.’
I thought of something. ‘Maybe whatever was in that box was the Ormond Singularity. Some precious jewel or something? Something people will kill to get their hands on?’
‘Error of logic, man,’ said Boges. ‘They’ve got their hands on it already. They’re still trying to …’
‘… kill me,’ I finished for him. He was right. It had to be much bigger than a jewel.
‘Look, Cal. I don’t want to sound dramatic—you know I like to keep it simple, but I just want you to know that if anything were to ever happen to you, I’d follow this thing through for you.’
A sudden sound near the stairwell brought the conversation to an end. A couple of security guards were hurrying towards us. ‘Hey, you two! What are you doing here?’
‘Nothing,’ said Boges as we quickly rolled up the drawings. I shoved them deep into the back pocket of my bag.
‘So go and do nothing somewhere else,’ the ugliest security guard ordered. Then he looked past Boges at some graffiti on the wall. ‘Have
you been vandalising the walls?’ he demanded. ‘What have you just put in that backpack? Come on, give it to me!’
That did it. Boges and I fled, racing down the ramps, so fast that I thought we’d both hurtle straight out onto the road with such force that we’d be unable to stop, and get run over by a bus.
That didn’t happen—we just yelled a hasty goodbye and split, Boges disappearing around the corner homewards, me heading back for my last night in the derelict house—I hoped. This city was getting too hot for me. Time I got out.
When I thought I’d thrown the security guards off the track, I slowed down, catching my breath. Boges was the best friend a guy could have, but he couldn’t be with me on the run. He was still part of the normal world, and I wanted to keep it that way.
I knew a couple of the bouncers outside the clubs by now, from my late night wanderings, and they sometimes had a joke with me. So I sat hunched over a bag of chips that the guy in the takeaway place gave me—in exchange for
crushing
all his cartons flat and stacking them in his
rubbish bins in the back lane. He asked a few questions but stopped when he saw me getting uneasy about the whereabouts of my family.
I decided to move on.
It wasn’t far off midnight now. Tomorrow would be the beginning of February. That meant I’d been on the run for almost a month …
It also meant I’d survived the first month.
With my head down, I hurried back towards the derelict house, crossing the shopping centre where only a few people were scattered, heading homewards. I saw a group of guys at the far end who seemed to be involved in an argument outside the casino, and I was crossing the road to avoid them when I realised that there were three men getting stuck into one guy, who lay curled up helpless on the paving.
Instinctively, I started yelling, ‘Hey! Stop!’
They ignored me.
‘Police!’ I yelled out, louder.
This time the three attackers stopped what they were doing, looked around, then started running, leaving their victim slowly crawling away. I hurried over to him, trying to help him to his feet but ended up propping him up against a
wall instead. As I did, he made a feeble attempt to escape, pushing me away, muttering, ‘Police, I gotta get away!’
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘There aren’t any police coming. I just said that to get those guys away from you.’
Now that the danger had passed, I took a closer look at the guy I’d helped. He was about twenty, I guessed, and had a black shirt, a silver chain around his neck, and a purple teardrop tattoo under his left eye. He pulled his legs close up to his body and was moaning. Blood dripped from his nose.
‘Do you want a doctor?’ I asked. I’d seen a medical centre not far from the backpacker hostel. ‘Do you think you’re hurt bad?’
‘You mean there are no cops? You were just saying that? Why?’ he spoke slowly, revealing bloody teeth. For some reason, I felt he was familiar but I quickly put the thought out of my mind.
‘Just to get those guys off you,’ I explained.
But now, in the distance, I
could
hear a siren wailing. Maybe someone else had called the police. And now that sound meant trouble for me. It was time to go back to my lair.
Slowly, the man came up real close to my
face. ‘You mean, you just wanted to stop me getting beaten up?’
‘You got a problem with that?’ I asked. In the silence that followed, I started to feel uneasy.
The sound of the siren was coming closer. It was time to get out.
The man with the teardrop tattoo offered me his grazed hand.
‘They think I’m working on the sly with the casino, to cheat them in poker. You’ve saved me from getting bashed to death.’
Hesitatingly, I shook his hand.
‘The name’s Kelvin.’
I’d heard that name just a while back. Now here was another one. I grabbed a name out of the air. ‘Tom,’ I said, thinking of my dad’s name. ‘Hope you’re all right, but I gotta go.’
As Kelvin scrambled to his feet, I heard the sound of glass smashing behind me.
Instinctively,
I turned. One of Kelvin’s attackers had returned and although he was already running away again, jumping into a waiting car, it was obvious he’d thrown something through the now gaping front window of the casino.